My Pearl
by linnylove
Summary: The Parkinson family isn't what it used to be. Pansy isn't who she used to be. She can think of nothing worse than returning to the school that saw her shame for so many years. Although everyone expected Hogwarts to finally be a place of peace, a new darkness begins to creep through the halls, and only Pansy seems to see it for what it is. And then there's Hermione.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own the Harry Potter series, or any of the Harry Potter characters. Just a humble lesbian who loves Pansy/Hermione

* * *

 _My pearl. Pearl Parkinson. We're strong because of what we have, love. Because of what we are. Do you understand, love? Do you understand?_

 _Yes, mummy._

 _Good girl. Now twirl for mummy. Lovely - what a lovely dress. What lovely hair._

 _Thank you._

 _Promise mummy you'll never do anything to harm your lovely hair. Promise mummy you'll always be a Parkinson girl._

 _Yes._

 _My pearl. Let's go show daddy._

* * *

" _I can't wait," Aunt Josephine trilled, braiding Pansy's hair with vigour as the ten-year-old girl stared at her reflection mutely. "Until darling Pannie's wedding day. Parkinson weddings are the events of the decade, my sweet. A beautiful bride. A beautiful groom. Nothing muddying up the room or the bloodline. Isn't that right, Scarlett?"_

 _Pansy's mother beamed. "Don't try and steal my daughter away. She'll be my pride and joy, won't you, pearl? Are there any boys you want to dance with tonight, hmm, love?"_

" _That Malfoy boy, Draco, isn't he handsome, Pannie?"_

" _Oh, they're always playing together when Narcissa and Lucius come over. They're inseparable."_

" _Is that so? Oh look, Pannie, you're blushing. How adorable."_

 _Pansy's mother placed a tight grip on her daughter's shoulder. "You like him, don't you, Pan?"_

 _And Pansy knew to nod and smile._

* * *

 **Chapter One**

The scorching water burned the skin on her neck as Pansy hung her head, standing unmovingly in the shower. The longer she stayed there, the less painful the burning became, until the feeling was nothing more than a numb ache. Pansy liked to get lost in that numb ache. She'd done it ever since she was little, ever since it became apparent to her she was to have no control over her life. Everything from who she associated with, what she said, down to her hair, her clothes, was to be controlled by her parents, by her stern mother. So showers became the one place where Pansy could do as she liked. Turn the water cold and chill herself solid. Turn the water hot and melt to a stump 'til she was washed down the drain. Turn the room so foggy she didn't have to get out and see her reflection in the mirror, smirking at her, knowing better than her, saying _let's swap places, I can do your job better than you._ Exist for herself, because everywhere else she existed for mother and father.

Of course, not any more. Now mother and father were dead. But the habit remained.

Everything was different to how things had been before the Battle of Hogwarts, but many things were also the same. Sometimes, when Pansy couldn't sleep on the stiff mattress of her new room at her aunt's house, she'd write two lists in the air with her finger. Things that were the same, things that were different.

 _Things that are the same:_

 _\- the Ministry is a joke_

 _\- the Parkinsons have a lot of money_

 _\- the Malfoys have a lot of money_

 _\- Pansy is alone_

 _Things that are different:_

 _\- the control the pureblood families used to have is being stripped, piece by piece_

 _\- the Parkison family assets have been frozen by the Ministry due to the illicit ways their fortune was maintained_

 _\- mother and father are dead_

 _\- Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are in prison_

 _\- Pansy is somehow even more alone than she was before_

Now Pansy and her Aunt Josephine lived in her aunt's summer cottage on a hill by the beach in Dover. A tiny little thing that wasn't seized by the government for the simple and elegant reason that it had technically been the property of one Nicholas Goodlubby, deceased, former Muggle solicitor, former lover to Aunt Josephine. Yes, that's right. Every bigot is a hypocrite, not the least Aunt Josephine, who slapped her son bloody at a family gathering when it was publicly revealed he'd been sleeping with Muggle women. Now he was dead too. Bar distant relatives that neither Pansy nor Aunt Josephine knew how to contact, the two of them were the last of the noble, pure, powerful Parkinson line. Shacked up in a leaky, destitute cabin. Penniless. Loathed by the entire Wizarding world.

Pansy thought back to the afternoon she'd been told her parents were dead. It was the day after the Battle, and the children of the Death Eaters were being kept in the Slytherin common room, guarded by different professors who switched with shifts. 'Guarded' is a misleading word to use - 'watched' would be more appropriate, as no one really had any interest in protecting them as a group, more interested in making sure no one took up the brave cause of avenging their parents' defeat. What the other side failed to realise was that none of them had any interest in doing anything of the sort. It was taking them a few hours to go through the dead, identify them, make note of any missing criminals. Professor McGonagall had been the one to tell her. That's what was most vivid about the memory, Pansy recalled as she sat down in the shower, too tired to stand. Mostly it was low-level Ministry officials who'd never followed the new rule at the Ministry under the Dark Lord's control, and had now quickly reassembled to make sense of the post-war world, who entered the room coldly and called a name. The student would get up, follow them out, not come back. Even though they all knew nothing ominous or cruel was being done to them, one still had the feeling of impending doom, of sitting in purgatory.

"Miss Parkinson," Professor McGonagall's calm, tired voice had called. Pansy had looked up, disguising her surprise. After what had happened in the Great Hall the night before, when Pansy attempted to give Harry Potter up to the Dark Lord, and McGonagall had locked all the Slytherins away as a result, she didn't really expect to be spoken to by the woman again. Pansy had stood, ignoring the stares of her peers, walked out with her chin held high. Out in the hall, Professor Sprout - of all people - guarded the door. It was beyond darkly hilarious that Professor Sprout should've been there to witness Pansy's world turn upside down.

"Miss Parkinson, I'm afraid to say that your parents -" Professor McGonagall had stopped short, as though, if it were possible, she was at a loss for words. "Your parents were one of the Death Eaters to survive the Battle and flee. They apparated onto a train track not far from your house. However, they happened to do so at the exact moment a train was coming down the track."

Pansy had stared at her silently. Not registering. Not wanting to ask for clarification.

McGonagall had given it anyway, almost looking sorry for her.

"They were killed on impact, Miss Parkinson."

Killedonimpactmissparkinsonkilledonimpactmissparkinsonkilledonimpactmissparkinson. It was like a bad film, the words echoing through her head, her vision going blurry. And even though it felt as though someone had gutted her with a hook, inexplicably, Pansy began to laugh. Not snicker, or giggle, but cackle, howl, her laughter reverberating through the halls, splashing up against everything, drowning them all. Pansy laughed because Scarlett and Charles Parkinson, of the Parkinson family, belonging to the 'Sacred Twenty Eight', servants to the Dark Lord, Death Eaters first and parents second, child-killers as of 12 hours before when they fought the students of Hogwarts to further their hateful cause, had fled the scene of their crime, leaving their daughter behind, only to be hit by a Muggle train and killed instantly. Pansy laughed because she had hated her parents, but they had been all she had, and now they were gone. Pansy laughed because Professor McGonagall, given the situation, given what her parents had done and what they had fought for, could now not say _sorry for your loss_ or _may they rest in peace_ because they both knew that the motherfuckers didn't deserve it. No, McGonagall could only watch Pansy laugh, watch the laughter turn to sobs, and hold her student as she wept.

Pansy turned the water off when it faded to a lukewarm wash, stepping out and wrapping a towel around herself. She could've easily cast a spell to dry herself off, but in her new humble life she'd learned that many things weren't really necessary. Family heirlooms weren't necessary. Three wardrobes full of expensive robes were not necessary. Three house elves were not necessary. Drying spells were in the same family, and anyway, Pansy got a sick satisfaction out of being uncomfortable and cold these days. Like it was some kind of poetic justice being served to her. Aunt Josephine was less accepting of their new way of life. She hated the small house, the beating of the shutters in the ocean wind, the bland and sparse food, her job as a seamstress in town. Pansy was actually pretty impressed by her aunt's efficiency in packing up their things and putting the two of them on a train West, writing an owl to some people she knew in Dover who quickly arranged a job for her in the only Wizarding clothing store in town. For all of Pansy's life, Aunt Josephine had not worked a single day, and had thrown galleons around like they were an inconvenience to keep in her pocket. Pansy had quickly remembered that Josephine had married into the family, had married Scarlett Parkinson's brother, who had died of a sickness when Pansy was too young to remember him. Maybe she had had a harder life before, explaining her new-found logic and vigour. Pansy didn't ask. Pansy didn't really talk much at all, letting her aunt fill the silences.

Technically, now being eighteen, Pansy could've left her aunt and started her own life. But Pansy was too hollow to do anything so independent and strong. She was all at once empty and heavy with something, shuffling around their house quietly, sometimes having uncontrollable fits of shaking where she crawled under her bed, waiting for it to stop. Words popped into her head from time to time to describe her feelings - _depression, loneliness, self-hatred -_ but she pushed them away. To understand herself was to confront herself. Once, and only once, Draco had come to visit. He'd written in advance to let her know he was coming, and Aunt Josephine had flushed when she read the letter over Pansy's shoulder, spending the rest of the week walking around the house cleaning and primping. Although Lucius and Narcissa were serving sentences in a newly formed prison - dementor free - the Malfoys still had all their money. Draco lived in their mansion alone, awkwardly trying to handle his family's affairs. No, him and Pansy had never been an actual couple. They'd had an unspoken agreement to pretend they were when in public, as though it made an unspeakable secret they both kept hidden easier to conceal, and they were friends even if not lovers. So he had come, stepping into their new home and saying nothing about their new - _new and exciting! Adventurous and surprising! Try it now! -_ poverty. But Pansy had not known what to say to him. She'd laid in bed, facing the wall, listening to him talk about the Ministry reforms and the rebuilding of school and his parents' living conditions and his offers of charity to her and her aunt, not responding, until after an hour of trying Draco gave up and left. He wrote only once more, offering money again, and Pansy had burned the letter in the fire before her aunt could see.

Now, the night before she was due to return to Hogwarts, the unsettling hollow feeling within her had only trebled. She did not want to go. She did not understand why she should. Aunt Josephine was insistent - _Whether you like it or not, Pannie, you and I are living in a drastically different world. We can't act how we used to. We no longer have that liberty. If I'm going to rebuild the Parkinson name, you need to go back to school and help me hold the hammer. Do you hear, Pannie? Don't you feel a sense of duty? You…_ \- and had purchased (not saying where she got the money from) all of Pansy's supplies. Now Pansy sat on her sad little bed, staring at the trunk in the middle of the room, willing it to set on fire without uttering the non verbal spell, which she did not remember, to make it happen. _This must be what Muggles feel like all the time,_ Pansy thought. _Helpless._

How could she go back to that place? How could she face the people that would hate her, students and professors alike? Pretend as though everything was fine and nothing had happened? How could she suddenly become a real person - because all the years up until then, she had easily been just who her parents wanted (needed) her to be. A vapid, bitchy bigot who knew all the right words, pushed around all the right people, going back to bed at night and crying at her own weakness, hating herself for her self-pity, telling herself _act for yourself you stupid fucking coward._ Now there was no reason to be that person, and she wasn't entirely sure who Pansy was underneath it. How could she live everyday with the weight of what the Parkinson name meant?

How could she go back and face Hermione Granger?

A groan escaped from her, and she rolled off the bed and under it, into her now-familiar hiding place, dust sticking to her freshly clean skin. There she fell asleep, one feeling dominant: dread.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

"Alright, darling," Aunt Josephine's crisp voice. "Now remember, be a good girl. Don't be - be conscious, love, of new… dynamics." _Don't be a racist cunt._ "And do your parents proud, may they rest in peace." _May those fuckers who dumped you on me and went and got themselves killed most certainly not rest in peace._

Pansy nodded anyway, stepping out of the car. She didn't expect her aunt to follow, but she did, actually physically taking Pansy's trunk from the back seat instead of using a charm - perhaps they'd both become more humble and magic-weary as of late - and wheeling it on her niece's behalf as they walked through King's Cross to Platform 9 and 3/4. When they crossed over to the magical side, Pansy was sure she'd set alight, as though she were a sinner in a Muggle church. Nothing happened, however. Wizarding families were bustling to and fro, lively, jovial. It was any other first day of school. Giving Josephine a stiff hug, Pansy got onto the train as quickly as possible, not looking anyone in the eye. She really didn't want to watch the facial journeys - the amicable initial look, then the recognition, then the scowl, then the push past. When she was a little girl, Pansy had wished and wished she'd somehow become a Metamorphmagus, so that she could change her hair as much as she wanted without her parents having to know. Now, she wished for it so that she might change her face. Change her name along with it. Jane Doe. Alice Smith. No Ps.

By the grace of Merlin, she found an empty compartment, and stuffed her trunk under the seat before sitting by the window herself, closing her eyes. She'd keep them closed in case anyone else came in, feigning sleep, so as no one spoke to her. This plan became especially wise when a muffled voice sounded outside the closed door, a muffled voice which became a familiar voice as the door slid open.

"There's nowhere else. She's asleep anyway, Ron, come on. Blimey."

Harry Potter, convincing Ron Weasley that sitting next to scummy Pansy wouldn't be so bad, was necessary due to there being nowhere else, was made bearable by her unconscious state. None of this really bothered her. What bothered her was the acute feeling of a third person; the definite knowledge that the two of them were in fact, part of a three. And that third person was Hermione.

She felt them shuffle with their trunks and sit, awkwardly silent, as the train screeched to life and began to move. Pansy was hyper aware of how she was sat, how her hair was resting, self-concious for the first time in months. Soon people they knew were walking past the open door, stopping to chat with them. Mostly people ignored her, but there was the occasional "Isn't that -" "Brave of _her_ to come back," "You can come sit with _us,_ if you'd rather, we can make some room." After about an hour, the casual chatting stopped, the door slid shut. Pansy's three friends were now confident she was sleeping.

"I wouldn't come back. If I were her. If that was my family." Ron said, the crinkle of a chocolate wrapper acting as a hilarious underlay to his words. "It's just… not on, is it?"

"Look," Harry responded. "I'm not saying I'm her biggest fan. Or anyone's whose parents fought with Voldemort. But it's not like it's her fault."

"She only tried to bloody hand you over to him!"

"I'm trying this new thing where I let things go, Ron. She was afraid. So was everyone."

"Yeah, and everyone didn't try and sell you out."

"We're all trying to start over. Give her a chance."

Ron didn't reply to that, but Pansy felt his quiet disapproval. The girl was touched by Harry's defence of her. She didn't understand it in the least. She'd been raised to hold a grudge lethally, to know her allies from her enemies. _That's what sets you apart from them,_ Pansy chastised herself. _Their instinct is to be good to people. Yours is to be bad to people. You should've never agreed to come back to school._

"Everyone deserves a second chance."

Pansy's breath caught in her throat, and without thinking, her eyes snapped open. Hearing Hermione speak for the first time in months was an electric shock, convulsing through her. She'd forgotten it, even though she'd tried desperately not to. Her jerk and eye-opening was immediately noticed by the others, who stared wordlessly at her, Ron's mouth falling open. Hermione was sitting right across from her. Had been this whole time. Had she looked at Pansy? Had she thought about her? Avoiding her gaze instinctively, Pansy shot from her seat and ran from the compartment before anyone could speak. Ran all the way down to the other end of the train, sitting on the corridor floor and catching her breath. _Fuck. Idiot. Fucking idiot._

When the train reached Hogsmeade, and Pansy had unabashedly changed into her robes in the hall, figuring she should just learn to accept the stares, she reluctantly clambered into the thestral-drawn carriage with her old friends. It was done due to a lack of choice. She couldn't really care less about seeing her old friends. They were all too different to get along, now, anyway, and they all spoke curt words to each other on the ride to school. Pansy had only ever liked Daphne Greengrass, as Daphne had never really been that big on the pureblood mantra. If anything, she'd been bolder than Pansy in rejecting it, but not bold enough to be chummy with any non-Slytherins - who did not understand, could never understand the position that people like Pansy and Draco had been in during the war. Daphne, however, was nowhere to be seen.

 _Everyone deserves a second chance._

Pansy had known from a very young age she wasn't like other girls. It started when she was six or seven and her mother began shoving her in the direction of any eligible pureblood boy. The families had gotten desperate decades and decades before Pansy's generation; staying pureblood often meant marrying distant cousins, and although in public her parents would've been the first to say it was a noble act for the sake of preserving pure wizarding blood, in private they felt a secret revulsion at the thought. It was imperative they arrange a match for Pansy as early as possible, and the birth rate of boys was lower than that of girls. Any pureblood boy was a prime opportunity. But for every event or party that Pansy was scrubbed clean for, forced into a dress for, rouged, hair braided, pushed toward a snot-nosed boy who giggled at the sight of her and ran, Pansy grew more and more sick with the idea of _love_ or _marriage_ as her child's mind understood it. Observing her own parents, it seemed as though Love and Marriage meant cold, quiet dinners, sleeping in separate ends of the house, mother arranging meals for father, mother losing weight for father, mother dolling Pansy up for father, lest he grow sick of his little toy daughter and have her replaced with a better one. He never said it, but Pansy knew her father had always secretly wanted a son. Scarlett Parkinson had had five stillborn sons, and one kicking and screaming, red faced girl. What a disappointment for him.

Perhaps that's why Pansy's mother had always worked extra hard to mould Pansy into someone - something - valuable. _I don't like boys. They're gross. I don't like Draco. He's mean. I don't want to braid my hair. I don't want to wear this dress. Why do I have to? Why?_ Her mother's reply; _Wait until you're a bit older, my pearl, and you'll see why. You won't hate boys any longer._ That knowing wink. That knowing snicker with Aunt Josephine. But as Pansy grew older, she grew more adamant. Every time a boy touched her she felt sick. Not sick like a stomach ache, sick like a disease. Like she'd been poisoned, needed time to recover. She knew better, however, than to keep voicing her distaste. She simply mimicked what her friends said, what her mother said, she played her part. Pansy figured, _I'm allergic to love, but that's no way to live. I'll fake it 'til I make it. Like learning how to dance._

Then there was Hermione.

She didn't remember noticing her much in her first few years - the 'mudblood' she despised along with the others for no other reason than where she'd come from, just as she'd been brought up to. They didn't speak. Pansy didn't look twice at her. Then she did look twice. Then thrice, then four times, then hiding behind a tapestry just to watch her stand in line waiting for class, shifting her bag from one shoulder to the other, the strap straining from all the books she carried around. Like a portable library. And, in fact, the library. Sitting at a desk alone, holding some book on magical water creatures upside down, looking at Hermione over the top of it. Hermione, head bent over a book. Scratching away at some parchment. Frowning at something she didn't understand. Sometimes, Hermione would look up and look directly in Pansy's eyes, as though she knew the Slytherin girl was watching. Pansy's heart would do a flip, and she'd stand and run out, furious with herself.

Jostling in the carriage, Pansy's fingers twisted together, then dug into her palms, so hard she drew blood. That's when her bullying of Hermione had taken it up a notch. Like a defence mechanism that kicked into action before any defence was necessary. Pansy had felt as though it was somehow Hermione's fault, Pansy's feelings. As though Hermione relished in embarrassing Pansy, in making her feel different. She thought if she were meaner, crueller, more powerful, she could beat those feelings down. _What feelings?_ she often asked herself, but she'd stop that line of thought almost immediately. She did it again then, the carriage coming to a stop, her stepping out and following the others into the Entrance Hall. There were no feelings. Although she regretted how she'd treated the Muggle-born girl, that's all it was; simple regret, born of her character development, born of her new found ability to be real Pansy and not pretend Pansy. _Who the fuck is real Pansy? Real Pansy is a real bitch, always has been. Stop making excuses._

The Great Hall was bustling with eager students. If it seemed as though there would be a morose atmosphere upon everyone's return, it was as though the end of the war had somehow cleansed everyone there, and rather than ignore the losses that had been suffered, the lives lost were kept in mind and celebrated. At the Slytherin table, even, there were smiling, happy faces. Those most disgusted with the war's outcome had simply not returned, and some had moved to different countries and were attending school there. The table was overwhelmingly sparse compared to the others, but Pansy saw this as a relief. Less people in the common room, less people in her dorm.

She slid into a seat next to Draco instinctively. He looked up at her and smiled uncertainly, blond hair falling in front of his eyes. He'd somehow aged twenty years in the past year, his cheeks hollow, hair longer, slight stubble. The two of them were unsure, after everything, how to act around each other. There was no reverting to their old pretend-couple game, no small talk involving disparaging enemies, as they now had none. They sat silently through the sorting of the First Years. Out of thirty or so new students, the Slytherins gained no one. Pansy didn't know what to make of that.

"Been a while," Draco said, sounding as though he hadn't said anything for a some time. Pansy was acutely aware of how hoarse her own voice would be if she spoke, so she smiled and nodded instead, desperate for some pumpkin juice. "What do you reckon, then? About the eighth year arrangement?"

Pansy frowned to indicate her ignorance. Before Draco could explain, however, a hush fell over the Hall. Professor McGonagall had risen, a glass in hand.

"Five months ago, a war was ended within these very walls," she paused, as though waiting for the remaining chatters to shut up, but the room was deadly silent. "Many of you were here, fighting. Many of you have suffered losses. Friends, family. As we begin a new school year, we also begin a new era. An era of peace. Of love, understanding. An era of forgiveness," here she flicked a glance at the Slytherins. Some people murmured. "What has become glaringly apparent is that there is only one thing we must prioritise in these days of recovery, because we are still recovering, not just as a school, but as a Wizarding population. That thing is friendship. To promote inter-house friendship, this year there will be no House Cup, so as to not promote any ill-wishing or rivalry. To those students returning to re-take their seventh year - Eighth Years, as we shall refer to you - we are introducing group sessions aimed at fostering a sense of unity and fraternity for a group of people who perhaps need it most."

"Thank goodness," someone sarcastically remarked. Pansy herself felt a twinge of horror.

"Thank you for your attention. And now, I'm sure everyone's just as eager as me to eat. Tuck in!" 

The plates filled as usual, a few First Years gasping with delight. Further along the table to her right, Pansy noticed the boy who had spoken during the headmistress's speech. He had brilliantly red hair, but this was the only brilliant thing about his appearance; his features were bland, forgettable, and something about his smile put Pansy on edge. He was talking in a relaxed manner to a few others, his mocking tone indicating he was dissecting McGonagall's words very critically.

"Draco," she said, the sound of herself surprising her into silence for a moment. "Draco," she tried again. "Who's that, there?"

Pansy pointed down the table. Draco looked at the boy for a while, mouth turning down at the corner.

"I don't know. I haven't a bloody clue."

They stared at him. How could it be that someone their age, or a year younger at most, was a Slytherin student whom they'd never seen? At the same moment, they both decided they didn't care, turning away.

"So?" Draco sighed, pushing around a sausage on his plate. "Fostering a sense of unity?"

The horror Pansy had felt at McGonagall's revelation returned seven-fold. What the headmistress had described sounded like some kind of twisted group therapy session with the people who hated her most in the world. Partly hilarious, but mostly devastating - Hermione would be there. The last thing Hermione would want with Pansy was unity and comradery, Pansy was positive. Her earlier words, though, rang through her head once more. _Everyone deserves a second chance. Everyone deserves a second chance._

"It's a joke." Pansy stated bluntly, pushing her plate away and feeling a familiar yet dangerous twitch for alcohol. "It's gonna end in blows."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Maybe it'd do you some good."

The girl snorted. It was the first time she'd done something expressive in months.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Whispers. Pansy could live with whispers. As depressed and lonely she'd been feeling these past few months, she couldn't help the fact that she was an _extrovert_ to the extreme of the word - before shit had hit the fan with the Dark Lord trying to take over the world, and it was just normal days at Hogwarts (normal for her) she'd been the life of the party in the Slytherin common room, or the shindigs in the prefect's bathroom. She thrived off people; their energy, their auras. It charged her, switched her on like a light bulb. So even if most people at Hogwarts had no interest in having anything to do with her, or _whispered_ their displeasure with her whenever she was within eyesight, being back in school had an effect on her she hadn't expected. Pansy wasn't exactly bouncing off the walls, but she wasn't curling up under her bed and crying either. _Ah, the sweet comfort of a reasonable middle ground._

The first night sleeping back in her old bed felt like some kind of cosmic test. Alright, the lights would come on any second, a team of people would come in clapping their hands, _you fell for it, as if anything can be how it used to be, let's publicly humiliate you in front of all your peers while we're at it, too._ Nothing happened, however. The light snores of Millie Bulstrode started up around 1AM, a sound Pansy had no idea she'd missed. A merperson swam past the window by her bed, a green, soft moonlight spilling into the room. When she finally began to drift off, a sound made her bolt upright into consciousness.

A thud, followed by a hiss, followed by " _Merlin's fucking balls!"_ being whispered furiously. Pansy pulled the curtain around her bed back all the way, swinging her feet onto the floor. In her line of sight appeared the figure of Daphne Greengrass, dumping her trunk at the bottom of the bed next to Pansy's, the bed she'd had since they were both eleven-year-old little brats, and taking off a weathered looking, wet travelling cloak. Even in the dim light, Pansy could see something about Daphne's appearance was different to what it had been over a year ago when they'd last seen each other, the summer before seventh year. Daphne had never returned to Hogwarts like Pansy had been made to by her parents. They hadn't been in contact at all. Often, Pansy had paid a few sickles to one of the kids who hid out in the Room of Requirement during Snape's reign, to listen out for Daphne's name being listed as one of the dead on the underground radio she knew they listened to. The kid had claimed never to hear the name, but Pansy had no way of knowing if he was being honest - why should he be, to her? - or if even if she did show up dead somewhere, it'd somehow make it back to a little radio show, a show where they'd definitely not feel announcing a pureblood family's name had any merit.

There the girl stood, however, alive, breathing, the smell of rain on her so strong it almost made Pansy tear up. Daphne turned around, sensing someone watching her, and stared wordlessly at her friend. They crossed over to each other at the same moment, caught in a tight hug, Pansy disregarding the dampness her pyjamas were absorbing from Daphne's clothes.

"Alright, Penny?" Daphne stood back, grinning from ear to ear, using her old nickname for Pansy.

"I thought you were dead."

"How wonderfully melodramatic."

"You know me. Primadonna."

They said nothing else that night, and nothing else the morning after - at least, nothing about where Daphne had been or why she had scars on her cheeks and hands, bags under her eyes, clothes that neither of them would've been caught dead in once upon a time. They walked to breakfast chatting, strangely, about nothing of importance at all. Reading neither of them had done over summer. Aunt Josephine's job as a seamstress. Draco's parents. They sat by the Malfoy boy, the three of them a new and interesting trio. The ginger boy from the night before was nowhere to be seen.

Draco had a fork with a piece of bacon raised to his lips, but he wasn't eating it, or indeed looking at it; his eyes were fixed securely on something across the hall. Pansy tried to follow his gaze, but there were a thousand students too many in the way to know for sure what was capturing his interest.

"Oi, lover boy," she said, throwing a piece of toast at him. The blonde boy snapped to, clearing his throat and shovelling bacon in his mouth with mighty speed. Pansy and Daphne exchanged a look.

Professor Slughorn appeared behind Draco's shoulder like magic - _ha!_ \- arms heavy with scrolls.

"Greengrass, Daphne," he said breathlessly, handing her a scroll. "Malfoy, Draco. Parkinson, Pansy. Your timetables. I expect you'll all be doing Slytherin house proud this year, eh? Draco and Pansy, you're still our prefects, so please refer to the times on the prefect's schedule at the bottom of the scroll so you know your patrolling rounds. There are -"

"Excuse me, sir," Pansy interrupted. "Prefects? Is that a funny joke?"

"Whatever do you mean, Miss Parkinson?"

"Shouldn't they pick new prefects from Fifth Year? I mean, technically, we should've all been gone by now."

Professor Slughorn pursed his lips, a line of shiny sweat building just under his nose. "Yes, Miss Parkinson, in a perfect world. However, you are _not_ all gone, and are in effect, simply a second set of Seventh Years. You've the same curriculum, the same exams, the same _responsibilities."_ He broke his anxious speech with a laugh, beginning to shuffle away from them. "Don't embarrass Slytherin house, Miss Parkinson. I expect you to fulfil your duties as per! Zabini, Blaise…"

"Fucking fantastic," Pansy muttered, throwing her scroll on the table.

"What's got your panties in a twist?" Draco asked, looking at his timetable. "Have you grown that sick of being my partner in crime?"

She wanted to say, _being a bullying prefect was pretend Pansy._ She wanted to say, _harassing Hermione Granger on prefect's rounds was pretend Pansy. Real Pansy doesn't care about abusing power. Real Pansy doesn't want to see Hermione Granger when she doesn't have to. Real Pansy wants to be a different person._ She didn't say any of that, however, because it'd be fucking pathetic. Just like she didn't tell her few remaining friends about that hollow feeling, or about what it felt like to have your parents ripped away from you, or about how many times she'd forgotten to eat over summer and been force fed by screeching Aunt Josephine, she didn't tell them about her - quote, unquote - _feelings._ She didn't tell them she wanted to change. Pansy had thought Draco and Daphne and Blaise and all of them would simply know, and themselves want to change. Even so, Slytherins didn't talk about that wishy washy crap out loud. _Don't be a Hufflepuff about it._ That's what she'd spat in Theodore Nott's face when he was being morose after his first girlfriend broke up with him.

"What's this?" Daphne broke Pansy's stream of consciousness, frowning at her timetable. "Session Group B, 12PM?"

"I'm in Group B too," Draco said. "It's some bloody thing MgGonagall is making Eighth Years do."

"For what?" Daphne said, in the same tone you'd use to question the actions of a cannibal eating a pair of kidneys.

Draco rolled his eyes in response, and Pansy unrolled her scroll, scanning the timetable. Potions. Charms. Session Group A. Oh, that was truly the cherry atop a tasty sundae. She wasn't even going to be in the same group as anyone who liked her. She checked with Blaise - Group B. Same for Theo and Millie. The six of them were the only Slytherin Eighth Years to have returned to school, and out of those six she was the only one in a group all by herself. Pansy had to appreciate McGonagall's sense of humour. The girl was confident that woman didn't do anything by mistake.

Pansy didn't remember taking Advanced Potions, but she didn't fight it. She stayed in the back of the classroom, watching Hermione raise her hand eagerly at the front of the room. Of _course_ even when she hadn't been here the entire year before, had instead been fighting the Dark Lord, she somehow kept on top of her studies and understood N.E.W.T. level Potions. Pansy was fucking lost. Back in the day, Snape let her get away with not really clicking with the subject. Being a favourite had its perks. But Slughorn liked her far less. In fact, he hated her. Probably had even before she'd had her little outburst in the Great Hall during the Battle. It just seemed like an arbitrary process, creating a potion - a little of this, a little of that, and you've made something that'll make someone fall in love? It didn't get through her skull, just like Arithmacy didn't, just like Divination never had. In fact, all of magic was arbitrary in her eyes, and Pansy had trouble mastering any of it. Something that wasn't really a well known fact about her, and something she hadn't really let her parents know. The shame of it, a pureblood Parkinson being unable to cast a proper charm? History of Magic was her bloody favourite subject. Note taking and research, something she could understand.

After a miserable Charms lesson, she walked up to the seventh floor where the so-called session was timetabled. She thought she'd be the first one there, but she turned the corner to see a group huddled outside the room. Harry, Neville Longbottom, Hannah Abbott, Padma Patil, a few others. Lavender Brown, stood a ways away on her own, head bent over something. And chatting to Harry and Neville, laughing about something, Hermione Jean Granger. Pansy had learned the girl's full name when Hermione had wandered away from her desk in the library and Pansy had scanned her eyes over the surface of it while walking past. It'd been the only thing to jump out at her, written in bubbly handwriting across Transfiguration homework. _What a fucking stalker you are._

Pansy waited until McGonagall had appeared and led them inside before walking over and into the classroom, slipping onto a table in the back, unnoticed. Lavender did the same as her, and Pansy couldn't help but wonder why she wasn't mingling with her friends. She'd heard what had happened to her - bitten by Fenrir Greyback, left to die, ending up living and becoming a werewolf. It sent a shiver of increasingly familiar shame through Pansy to recall the fact that Greyback was an old family friend. He'd been over for a dinner once, when Pansy was ten, kneeling down and tucking a strand of the little girl's hair behind her ear. _Pretty hair,_ he had grinned wolfishly - pun intended, thank you very much. The memory, like most of Pansy's memories, was a cold one. And now one of his victims sat five feet away from her, life irreparably changed. _A stalker and a life ruiner._

"I know that many of you may feel these sessions are unnecessary." McGonagall began, standing tall and stern at the front of the room. Pansy didn't think she'd ever seen her sat down. "That after the things you've seen and done, you're above it, or else you don't need it. The truth is, the things we do and see, they affect us on levels we can't see or understand. The purpose of these sessions is to introduce a form of therapeutic legilimency that'll help unpack any traumatic -"

Hermione's hand shot up in the air. 

Professor McGonagall looked over the top of her glasses endearingly. "Yes, Miss Granger?"

"You'll be going through our minds? Our memories?" 

"Not I, Miss Granger. You'll be pairing up."

Murmuring broke out. "Wait," Neville said, sounding more confident than Pansy had ever heard him be. Mocking him over the years had been easy as pie. "We'll be pairing up, and _then_ going into each other's minds? Memories?"

"The point of these sessions is building trust. Understanding. Not just of each other, but of yourselves. Mr. Longbottom, I can assure you none of you will be so adept at legilimency to access precise memories or thoughts. The ideal would be to access feelings. Patterns…"

She trailed off as the murmuring became louder, more offended.

"Look." McGonagall spoke so clearly and loudly that it hushed them all. Her eyes seemed to flick over everyone one by one, seeing through them. "I'll be frank with you all. You're adults. Most of you have lived a lifetime before the age of eighteen. If you don't want to do this, you're excused. I am an old woman now - _thank_ you, Mr. Boot - older and _wiser_ by far than all of you. And yet I practice in paired legilimency, just as I advise you all to do. I'll say it once again. If anyone in this room does not wish to part-take in these group sessions, they may leave now."

There was a momentary silence. A chair scraped back, and Hannah Abbott quietly got up, slinging her bag over her shoulder and walking out of the room. _What's she so desperate to hide?_ Pansy was acutely aware of the fact that she ought to leave, too. She ought to scrape her chair back just the same and walk out, never looking back. _Get up now. Get up now._ But something rooted her to the spot, and before she could make her legs move, Professor McGonagall was splitting them up into pairs. _What are you doing? What the fuck are you -_

"Miss Granger, you will be paired with Miss Parkinson."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

Pansy was sitting by the classroom window, Hermione in a chair facing her. There was nothing between them except empty space, and although Pansy was sure that the other pairs were deep into their own discussions - _We'll start, today, simply with talking. One cannot enter the mind of someone they do not comprehend_ \- she was sure everyone could hear the beating of her heart, like a drum. Loud in her ears, sending blood to her face. She knew she must look ridiculous to the other girl, sat silently, beetroot red, staring at the floor, not meeting her partner's gaze.

"I'll start," Pansy heard Hermione say over the sound of her own pulse. "Well, as you know, I'm Muggleborn. My parents are dentists - doctors for the teeth. What do your parents do?"

 _As you know._ Pansy said nothing, but she did look up, meeting the other's steady gaze with fluttering eyelashes. Brown. Her eyes were brown.

"This'll probably go a lot more smoothly if you say something." Hermione cocked an eyebrow, her dry tone tickling Pansy's skin inexplicably.

"Ministry." the Slytherin winced at the croak of her voice as the lie sounded itself. It was a half-lie, really. Her father _had_ worked at the Ministry, when he was alive. "My father, he… Department of International Magical Cooperation."

Hermione seemed to brighten with interest. "Oh, really? What are his responsibilities?"

Pansy blinked. "I don't know." Her and her father had shared exactly five conversations in her entire life. Mostly her mother had acted as a messenger on her father's behalf. _Daddy would like you to wear the purple dress to meet daddy's boss, pearl. Daddy says he's so proud of you for making prefect. Daddy says to keep an eye on Draco this year, pet, the Dark Lord has something very important he needs Draco to do._

"Fascinating department, actually. I read _British Diplomat in Wizarding Russia_ this summer, a memoir. It's positively amazing how differently the Wizarding governments across the globe function. Even more different than Muggle governments -" Hermione stopped dead out of nowhere, giving Pansy an unreadable look. "Never mind my boring book."

Pansy couldn't exactly say _I'd listen to you talk about international magical relations until I died,_ so she opted to continue saying nothing. Around them, it seemed as though every other pair was having lively, intense conversations. Even sombre Lavender and Harry were laughing about something - Harry laughing, Lavender talking with a small smile in a low voice. Pansy's stomach curled. It was obvious Hermione would've rather been paired with anyone else in the world. Pansy would've rather been paired with anyone else in the world.

"Why did you decide to come back to Hogwarts?" the bushy haired girl's words were clipped. Pansy couldn't help the growl of the beast that lived inside her chest, the beast that had made her torment Hermione all those years for what she made Pansy feel. Like an abused dog, Pansy's instinct was to be _defensive,_ to be cruel. _Looks like pretend Pansy was real Pansy all along,_ Pansy thought, a biting retort forming in her mind. She silenced the creature inside her before she could spit the words out. Pansy was too tired. She was tired of fighting. Hermione's resentment was exactly what she deserved.

"My aunt made me."

"Your aunt? Not your parents?"

A slip up. "No, they did - I mean, they all did."

"You didn't want to come back?" 

Pansy shrugged - _no._

"Why not?"

"Would you? If you were me?"

An interesting moment of honesty, Pansy self-reflected. Hermione clearly thought the same, uncharacteristically quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her tone was softer. "What does your mother do?"

Pansy instinctively smiled a wicked grin. Mother, much like pre-war Aunt Josephine, hadn't lifted a finger in her life. The pureblood families were old-fashioned in more than just a few ways. Women didn't have jobs, they stayed at home, they reared their offspring to be perfect, they bossed around house elves, they listened to their husbands with tight expressions. It would be unfair to Scarlett Parkinson to say she'd never _worked_ \- raising a child is work. Mostly, however, Scarlett had done so through the middle-man of a nanny. There were often times throughout Pansy's childhood she remembered her mother disappearing for the entire day, coming back just before father, and whispering in her daughter's ear _mummy's been here all day, hasn't she, darling?_ What she did on those excursions, Pansy still didn't know. Would never know. Had never thought to ask before it was too late.

"Housewife."

Hermione nodded, as if this confirmed something for her. Pansy was desperate to look inside the other girl's head, unspool the ball of thoughts inside, read every single letter. Then again, she didn't think she'd be able to bear the unfiltered, brutal opinion Hermione had of her. In that moment, Pansy felt something she hadn't felt in a long time - recklessness. She'd had nothing to lose for some time now, but now it felt less like a detriment and more like a tool. So, Hermione hated her. So, the situation was awkward. She might as well make the session something worthwhile.

"You and Weasley, then." Hermione raised both eyebrows this time. "Spicy, is it?"

The Gryffindor's cheeks coloured. "Spicy?"

Pansy smirked. "Does he know how to make you tick?" blank stare. "Merlin, Granger. Does he _turn you on?_ "

Hermione's mouth dropped open, and her expression travelled from appalled to unreadable to angry within seconds. It felt reassuring to act exactly as Pansy was expected to act. It meant she could control the outcome of any given interaction, and control was something she wanted hungrily.

"Not that it's any of your business," Hermione said, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. "But Ron and I are not a couple."

 _Good._ Pansy startled herself as she said the word in her head forcefully. _Where did that come from?_

"What a loss." she said instead.

"If we have to work together, I'd rather you weren't a fucking bitch about it."

The words were expected, but the sting Pansy felt hearing them was not. It felt like a slap from someone wearing a sharp ring - the numb, overpowering ache, followed by a focused cutting of pain, warm blood running down the cheek. She stared at Hermione, her face growing even redder - if it were possible - by the second. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Professor McGonagall spoke from the centre of the room.

"Now, in your pairs, I'd like you to begin attempting to explore your partner's mind. Point your wand - not _jab,_ Longbottom, _point -_ and calmly recite the incantation. As I said previously, the likelihood of a clear feeling, let alone anything so complex as a memory, being accessed at this level is extremely low. If you are made uncomfortable at any step of this process, you're more than welcome to leave the room."

Pansy's eyes widened in fear. "I'll -"

" _I'll_ go first," Hermione snapped, raising her wand before Pansy could do a thing. " _Legilimens._ "

 _Pansy stood over the graves of her parents, eyes droopy with the relaxation potion Aunt Josephine had made her take that morning. Pansy had been shaking all night, lying on her floor and rattling the floorboards. They were still in their old house, but they weren't welcome for long. Only for so long as arranging the funeral and settling matters had taken. Disgusting, really. A Death Eater's funeral. No one showed up. It was just Pansy and her aunt, dressed in their nicest funeral robes, standing in the Parkinson plot of the wizard's cemetery that all Parkinsons had rested in after death for generations. They didn't deserve rest, the raven haired girl thought to herself, throwing down the pansies - fuck you very much, mother and father, for the name - she'd purchased from an old woman across the road. Aunt Josephine scrunched up her face at the careless gesture._

" _It's a disgrace. Parkinson blood being buried hush hush on a poor man's salary. No one seeing them off." Aunt Josephine's voice broke. "Say a few words, won't you, Pannie? Say a few words for mummy and daddy, one last time."_

 _Pansy took a deep breath, tilting her head. A single tear rolled down her cheek, followed by another. When she'd started crying, she didn't know._

" _Dad. The last conversation you and I shared, you told me that you had no choice but to fight for the Dark Lord. That you were fighting on the right side of history. I hope you know how much I fucking hated you. How much I still do. I hope you're turning in your grave knowing your entire life was nothing but a stain on this planet."_

" _Pansy!"_

" _Mother, you married into a disgusting family, and spent your life making me into someone no one can stand to look at," she paused. "I hope hell is real and that you're rotting there."_

Pansy opened her eyes, breathing heavily. Her hands slipped from the sides of the chair they'd been gripping, sweat slicking them off. Hermione was frozen, wand still raised. Neither of them said anything. Casual chatting and frustrated repeats of the incantation were flying around the room, the others oblivious to what had just transpired. It figured, really, that of all of them Hermione would be able to expertly use the spell to access specific memories. If Pansy took a second to let what had just happened sink in, she was confident the level of humiliation she'd feel would make her drop dead. Old Pansy would've stood, throwing her chair to the floor, and told McGonagall to shove it before storming out of the room. New Pansy just sat there, burning a hole in the floor with her gaze.

"You were acting as though they were alive." Hermione spoke in a quiet voice. Pansy couldn't see her expression, but she'd imagine it'd be disgust, or else resigned surprise, or else satisfaction at seeing petty Pansy who'd harassed her for years lead a miserable life.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Pansy looked up, and was met not with disgust or satisfaction, but pity. This made her blood boil like nothing else.

"Better dead people for parents than a pair of fucking orthodontists," she said in lieu of a response.

Hermione's lip twitched. _Was she fighting a smile?_ "How do you know what an orthodontist is?"

As though by the grace of someone watching from above, McGonagall cleared her throat and excused them at that precise moment, and Pansy collected her things and shot out of the classroom before being forced to answer the question. She got down two floors before running steadfast into someone, her bag falling, books tumbling everywhere, her feather-light frame tripping over. A bruising grip caught her before she hit the floor, helping her to her feet. The person she'd ran into was the ginger boy from the other night. Standing, she could see how tall he was, a foot at least taller than her. Even through her robes, his touch seemed icy cold. Pansy whipped her arm way.

"My sincerest apologies," he said cheerily. With a wave of his wand, the contents of her bag were righted. "I don't think we've been introduced."

Pansy gave him a sharp, sardonic smile, then pushed past him to get to the stairs.

In the Slytherin common room she found Blaise and Draco sitting on one of the sofas, sharing a midday drink of whiskey. Beyond classic. Although what she really wanted was to go dump her stuff, crawl under her duvet, and bunk the rest of the day off, the boys beckoned her over as she walked in. Pansy reluctantly sat on the couch across from them. They were finding it much easier slipping back into old habits than she was.

"We're just discussing how mesmerisingly catastrophic what just happened was." Draco drawled, offering her the bottle. Pansy shook her head no. A dying man in the desert shaking his head no to a glass of cold water. "The whole thing is just illegal enough and just stupid enough to exactly belong in the curriculum of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"I just had the distinct displeasure of an hour with Ronald Weasley," Blaise sighed, a flash of humour in his eyes. "Don't know what was funnier, watching him trying to get into my head, or the flash of hot and heavy with Granger I caught when glancing into his."

A pang shot through Pansy's chest. She couldn't identify the feeling.

"How was it for you, Pans?"

Pansy exhaled. "Loved every second of it, but will unfortunately be _withdrawing_ from the class from this moment on."

"I actually think there's some merit to it," Draco stretched his arms, a yawn swallowing some of his words. "I mean, we can't -" yawn. " - just go on like before. Maybe there's a method to the madness."

"Draco Malfoy, advocating mind reading and mingling with the Gryffindors?" Blaise snorted. Blaise had one of those laughs that made you do a double take. A fourth year walking past stifled a giggle at it, and Blaise threw a paper weight his way. "The world has ended."

"The world as we knew it." Pansy muttered, standing and trudging up to the dorms.

When she awoke, the room was dark, and the soundtrack consisted of: Millie's snores, the groan of the lake behind the glass, and the chattering of some Slytherins still awake in the common room. The clock on her bedside table read 2:48AM. Still groggy with sleep, Pansy sat up, her nose bumping into something that was floating in the air above her bed. It was a paper airplane, hovering perfectly still, waiting for her attention. One of those simple feats of magic Pansy wouldn't have the first clue about replicating. Taking it into her hands, she unfolded it. There was only a sentence written across the page, in a familiar bubbly handwriting.

 _I can more than stand to look at you._


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

When Hermione woke up on May 9th, having travelled to Australia to retrieve her parents as soon as the war had ended, and having only returned to her childhood home with them the day before, she opened her eyes and for the first time in years felt the feeling of a lack of purpose. Even during the summer, Hermione woke up at precisely 7:30AM, cooked breakfast for everyone, then started that day's study schedule. Not just homework for Hogwarts or extended magical reading and research, but every area of knowledge she could explore. Hermione Granger had never been a listless or unfocused child - even before she could walk, her mother and father would tell tale with bemused smiles of how she'd sit over a baby's set of blocks and quietly arrange them just like the picture on the box. If the world was large and her desire to know it larger, why shouldn't she spend every second she had knowing it, and knowing herself?

The day she figured out she was a lesbian, instead of feeling shock or confusion, she felt embarrassed she hadn't had the brains to figure it out earlier. It had been seven days exactly as of the morning she laid there staring at the ceiling on May 9th. The realisation had come to her as easy as inputting information into a calculator and pressing enter. Ron had leaned toward her and kissed her in the Chamber of Secrets in the middle of the battle, and just like that she knew. Ron was her second kiss. Hermione had kissed one person before that, and it had been - of all people - Ginny. They'd gotten tipsy with Luna in the Astronomy tower one night in Sixth Year, Ginny and Luna luring her up there while she was on one of her prefect's rounds, and giving her enough alcohol that for the first time in Hermione's life she was _drunk._ Bar the occasional glass of wine with dinner back home, she'd never ventured into the territory of binge drinking or hard partying. It had never seemed her style. Tipsy enough that the sky was below her and the stone floor above, Hermione had dazedly watched Luna and Ginny embrace, mouth falling open. _We're together,_ Luna had said when she'd seen Hermione's expression. _Marvellous,_ Hermione had slurred. _I've never kissed anyone._ And with a whisper from Luna, Ginny leaned forward and gave Hermione her _first_ kiss. It had started a ticking inside her chest. It had been lovely. Kissing Ron, on the other hand, had been wet and dissatisfying and forced. _Oh,_ she'd thought to herself, running with him hand in hand back up to the fighting. _I love you like a brother. I'll only ever love you like a brother._

So, a lack of purpose, a lack of understanding, these were things unfamiliar to Hermione. Starting with May 9th, they became her daily reality. Slipping back into normal life in the Muggle world had been harder than it had ever been before. People walked on the high street and laughed and watched TV and had _no idea_ how close the world had come to falling apart. It seemed surreal, funny. Guilt ate her up all summer as Ron wrote her letters, her own responses brief and unspecific. Hermione didn't want to break his heart through a letter, but she couldn't break his heart by not writing him at all, either. Convincing Ron to go along with her not coming to the Burrow for the last few weeks of summer had been a nightmare. _What's the matter? You aren't coming? Is something wrong with your parents? Are the Muggles holding you prisoner?_ Her own parents had been surprised, too. _You'd like to stay here until school? Is everything alright?_ Hermione's mother asked as the two of them cooked dinner one night. _Everything is fine,_ she'd responded. _It's only that I'm gay, and I don't want to be stuck with Ronald in the same house for three weeks after I've broken up with him._ Her mother had raised her eyebrows, never turning away from the carrots she was chopping. _Ah. That's wise of you._

When September rolled around, she stepped onto Platform 9 and 3/4 biting her lip nervously, looking around so sharply that her father had to actually say the words, "You'd think that Voldemorter fellow was back for all you're worrying, and not that you had to break up with a teenage boy!" out _loud,_ in public, outside in the world where people were. Hermione had shot her father the obligatory _you're ruining my life_ look she'd perfected from films and gave both her parents a kiss on the cheek and many promises to write every week, boarding the train. For six years boarding this train had given her the same thrill of excitement and anticipation she'd felt her very first time, and now she boarded it uncertain of the future, uncertain of herself. Of course, she'd done all the reading for her classes, had memorised half her text books, but with less vigour than ever before.

Ron and Harry found her, and they all exchanged hugs and smiles, and Hermione avoided Ron's gaze.

Seeing Pansy Parkinson had made her feel something else she hadn't felt in - well, probably her entire life. The desire to be silent, to observe without comment. Pansy bloody Parkinson. In the past year, Hermione had grown up more than she thought herself capable, having always thought of herself as more mature or advanced than her peers _. It isn't vanity if it's true._ She'd forgiven all her childhood gripes and grievances, forgiven or else forgotten, having no headspace to bear them in mind. Now, purposeless, no war to fight, seeing Pansy made her feel like a self-conscious thirteen-year-old all over again. Pansy had had the acute ability to zero in on all of Hermione's insecurities - teeth, hair, overbearing personality - and attack her for them mercilessly. Hermione had never had patience for bullies. A smile played on her lips as she remembered punching Draco Malfoy.

However, another part of her, the bigger part of her, felt nothing but empathy. Kids were fucking stupid. She'd had a few conversations now with Harry about what had happened in the Great Hall, and Harry had been insistent on his forgiveness. _We were all - are all - kids. She did the same thing half that terrified hall wanted to do, but didn't have the guts to._ If Harry could forgive, Hermione could forgive. She searched Pansy's sleeping features meticulously anyway, curious to see if she could find flaws in others as easily as the other girl could. Hermione had found nothing except smooth pale skin, glossy black waves of hair. _What colour are her eyes?_ she thought to herself. She didn't get a look, even when Pansy jolted awake and ran out of the compartment, leaving the three of them quizzical.

 _Blue._ Her answer arrived a day later as she sat across from Pansy in their session. The entire idea seemed both perverse yet understandable to Hermione. On one hand, through her in depth research she had discovered than Muggle methods of therapy were in some ways superior to wizarding methods, which often rooted in using a spell or a potion to magic the issue away. Hermione wasn't convinced it was so easy to fix problems of the mind. Legilimency was one of the better methods; extract a feeling or memory, dissect its roots or causes, talk about it with someone, resolve something. Hermione was _certain,_ however, that no amazing therapy would be the result of them pairing off with each other and interrogating each other for deepest dark secrets. This conclusion was confirmed for her as in a fit of anger at Pansy she cast the spell and - expectedly or unexpectedly, she wasn't sure - had a memory of Pansy's flood her mind. The memory came with a feeling dripping off of it, and the pure rage and sorrow that covered it all overwhelmed Hermione's senses, dropped her focus. She blinked it away, looking at Pansy once more. Blue eyes. Deep blue eyes.

When Pansy got up and hurried out, Hermione wasn't feeling purposeless or lost any longer. Her old passion shook off dust and started up the machine in her head. She buzzed with a thousand questions. How did Pansy, pureblood witch who'd probably never stepped foot on a Muggle street, know what an _orthodontist_ was? Why had she lied about her parents? Why had she stared at Hermione with an indistinguishable look? Not harassed her like she used to, but sat as if broiled with holding herself back. Holding herself back _why_? Why did she think that no one could stand to look at her? Hermione found looking at Pansy to be, despite their history, actually quite pleasant. The girl had one of those faces that made you want to paint it, draw it, get it down on paper so that others could appreciate it far forward in time.

 _Guilt._ Guilt was buzzing inside of her continuously those days - what with only seeing Ron when Harry was there so that difficult conversation was avoided - and somehow, making Pansy's already pale face drain entirely of colour like she had, multiplied the guilt she felt tenfold. The memory she'd seen had said things about Pansy that Hermione had never imagined in a million years would exist inside the Slytherin girl's head. It made Hermione feel sad, speechless, _hopeful - hopeful for what?_ \- all at once. _You married into a disgusting family, and spent your life making me into someone no one could stand to look at._ It was an illogical statement, and that's the only reason Hermione found herself awake at 2AM, scrunching up endless pieces of parchment, trying to somehow say something to a girl she wanted - not knowing why - desperately to talk to again. Hermione was sure Pansy wouldn't return to that class. When else would they see each other? Exchanging frank words over a boiling potion while Terry Boot eavesdropped didn't seem entirely ideal.

Nothing was working, her thoughts weren't coming out on paper like she wanted them to. She chewed on her quill absent-mindedly, hunched over the page, sat upright in bed, a candle floating beside her. If she in any way sounded piteous or righteous, Hermione knew without a doubt Pansy's hot-headedness would spark up like a flame, and the girl would set the message on fire. _Be to the point. Say what you mean, in plain English._

 _I can stand to look at you._ Hermione tutted, throwing that one side. It sounded sarcastic, reserved, mocking - c _heer up, you're not so bad, I can stand to look at you I guess._ But it was close. _I can definitely stand too look at you_? Too overeager. _I can more than stand to look at you_?

Hermione groaned in exasperation. She'd never be completely happy with anything she came up with. Folding up the most recent variation, she walked out onto the landing outside the portrait of the Fat Lady and charmed the message on its way. She had no way of knowing if anyone in the Slytherin common room would be up at this hour and opening the door to let it through, anyway. A sense of satisfaction settled in her stomach as she walked back to bed nonetheless. _I've done something morally right. I'm just righting my wrong, that's all._

As she climbed the stairs, however, a thought struck Hermione that made her stop in her tracks. Dazed, she entered the dorm where the Seventh Year girls were sleeping, creeping up to the bed by the window on the far side of the room. " _Ginny,_ " she whispered, gently shaking her friend awake. Ginny muttered something and turned over in her sleep. "Ginny!"

The red haired girl opened her eyes, blinking away sleep. "'Mione?"

"Yes," Hermione smiled awkwardly, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Um - I've just a quick question, is all."

Ginny yawned, rising onto her elbows. "You're fucking mental, babe. Look at the fucking time. _Look_ at the fucking time," she picked up a pillow and hit Hermione weakly, stifling a second yawn.

"Just quickly. If someone said to you, _I can more than stand to look at you,_ what would you think?"

"Well," Ginny sighed. "I'd have to know the context."

"Like what?"

"Like why are they flirting with me, in the first place? Is it it in a jokey way or a serious way? Because if it's the second, then that's a bit too sickly sweet for… are you okay?" Hermione's face had flushed. Now Ginny was fully awake, a grin spreading across her cheeks. "Uh oh, Hermione. Did you say it to someone or did someone say it to you?"

Hermione shot up. "I'd better go to bed."

"Oh _no no no,_ " the Weasley caught her arm. "You tell me immediately or else I'm waking up all the grumpy Quidditch players who have try outs tomorrow afternoon and blaming it on you."

"Good _night_!"

She walked back to her own bed and crawled under the blanket. Hermione had flirted with Pansy Parkinson. Something about that made her deliriously exhilarated, like being eleven and stepping onto a magic train that's taking you somewhere you can only dream of. Had she subconsciously done it intentionally? She wasn't entirely oblivious, being inexperienced didn't mean she lacked common sense, had never read a love poem or watched _When Harry Met Sally._ She was certainly less oblivious than fucking Harry Potter, who needed to be told flat out when someone was interested in him. On some level, Hermione finally decided as she drifted off to sleep, she'd known what she was doing. It didn't mean anything, just that she wanted to flirt with someone, wanted to see what it was like. Wanted to cheer her former tormentor up, nothing more.

Her dreams were by the ocean. Heavy. Blue.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

For a week, Pansy walked around on a tightrope. Darting around corners, going to breakfast really early or really late, staying in the corners of classrooms, avoiding. Avoiding the girl Pansy had come to refer to in her head as _Her_ or _She._ The note, folded up into a tiny square and hidden under her pillow, soft and fragile from being folded and unfolded so often by Pansy, had triggered a number of conflicting emotions within her. She didn't know what to make of it. She didn't even like to think of it - she went from class to class, exchanged brief friendly words with a few people, moving or acting constantly so as not to let her thoughts wander. The words were etched into her eyelids, deeply, painfully. Every time she blinked, she received an electric shock. Whenever she tried to sleep, she was kept awake, buzzing with something.

The only thing that acted as a true distraction for Pansy was Draco. Something was wrong with him. It was like their Sixth Year, when he'd been haunted by the Dark Lord's request. Barely eating, skipping half his lessons, not speaking to any of them. This time it wasn't as dramatic, but he certainly wasn't behaving like his regular self; the war had changed them all, but Pansy had an inkling it was something else. Although Pansy was still a closed book, and they'd all used to be the kind of people who scoffed at open displays of emotion, now Pansy rocked with empathy for her long time friend. She wasn't sure how to go about asking him about it, however. In every sense of the word, Pansy was insensitive. _I bet She's much more adept at consoling her friends._

One night, however, Pansy no longer had to try and think of a solution. She'd gone down to the Quidditch pitch for the obligatory, traditional pranking of the Gryffindor team she'd indulged in for years, a solo mission for a solo artist. Sneaking into the changing room, an itching powder in hand, Pansy walked over to the shelf where the robes were folded neatly. Before she could sprinkle them, a sound caught her attention. The unmistakeable sound of someone weeping. Pansy would've immediately turned around and left the room had she not recognised the crying. She'd only seen Draco cry once before, that same year he was tasked to kill Dumbledore. It had disturbed and upset her deeply. Slipping the bottle into her pocket, Pansy rounded the corner into the showers. There he was, sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. He was drenched, running water pouring over him - shivering. Wordlessly, Pansy went over and kneeled beside him. The water was cold.

"I love him," Draco said without looking up. "I love him."

Pansy waited.

When he raised his head, she saw he'd bitten his own lip so hard that it was bleeding. "I'm gay, Pan. I'm gay. I'm gay, and I love Harry Potter."

"I know," Pansy surprised herself by saying. Of course she'd known. Of course she'd known for years, ever since they were children pushed together at parties and balls, had known when they'd pretend-dated, hiding something, not knowing what themselves. She'd known, but had never thought to say the words to herself, had never thought to _think, "Draco is gay._ " His near decade-long obsession with Harry had made Pansy and their friends raise their eyebrows more than a few times, but it wasn't discussed, it wasn't said out loud. That's how they'd all been raised.

"Do you -" he swallowed, his expression growing number. "Do you think he might love me, too?"

She didn't say anything. Honesty is cruel. Instead, she did something she'd never done; she pulled Draco toward her and hugged him to her, tightly, collapsing against the wall alongside him. They sat under the running water in silence, Draco's soft sobs hidden by the sound. Pansy stared at the blood from his lip travel down the drain, a horrible feeling opening up in her throat, like a black hole spreading. She physically choked, causing Draco to look up. "Sorry, I -" Pansy keeled forward, bracing her hands on the floor. " I don't - know -" she gagged again, whimpering. Draco was immediately beside her, placing a warm hand on her back. _You're such a shitty friend. You can't let him have this moment, you have to make it your own._ Vomit spilled on the tiled floor, and it took her a dazed second to realise it was her own. Her vision blurred, and she fell to her side, suddenly hot despite the freezing water. _Pansypansypan…_ a faraway voice called, battling the ringing in her ears. _I'm gay, and I'm in love with Hermione Granger,_ she felt her lips mutter. Then everything was sort of like this: nothing.

Pansy had always hated the hospital wing. The ceilings were too high, windows too tall, light too bright. She was a creature of the earth, and earth creatures prefer to curl up in a small, dark space until they feel better - not lie in open view of the world and all its light, gently anxious. When she came to, the sun was streaming in through the windows. Her mouth felt dry. Slowly, like a glass filling up with water, last night's memories came back to her. Draco's confession. Her own realisation. Her collapse. She sat up, head throbbing. How fucking embarrassing. Pansy stood, shakily, and changed back into her weekend clothes, which were folded neatly on a chair beside the bed.

"You're awake," Madame Pomfrey's jovial yet strict voice came from behind her. "You gave your friend Malfoy quite the scare. He's just left."

"What was it? Poisoning?" Pansy pulled her sweater over her head, facing the nurse.

"No, dear. Sounds to me like it was nothing more than quite a bad panic attack." 

She grit her teeth. Without another word, she exited the wing, ignoring Madame Pomfrey's pleas for her to stay and listen. Panic attack? A Parkinson, having a panic attack? A Parkinson, gay? A Parkinson, in love with a Muggleborn? Pansy ought to change her last name. It didn't fit any more. Nothing was fitting any more. Her head felt like a block of wood with a square shaped hole that a child was attempting to fit a triangle through.

By the time Pansy got to the common room, changed, and went to the Great Hall for lunch, she'd made up her mind to just repress her realisation. It had to be easy - so many people repressed, married, ignored their entire lives. It wasn't that she was of the opinion there was anything wrong with liking girls, it was that she couldn't bear to face what her life would become if she lived like that openly. Aunt Josephine would kick her out, she'd have to manage on her own - how? She didn't know how her friends would react. Draco, at least, would be alright. He sort of had to be. She wondered if he'd made out what she'd said the night before. Somehow, his own news had had no effect on her. None other than to glance over at Harry as she entered the hall and knowingly smirk. Karma instantly punished Pansy for the action when her eyes fell on Her, sat beside him. She lowered her eyes and darted over to the Slytherin table.

"Pans," Draco sighed with relief as she slid onto the seat beside him. He looked like he hadn't had much sleep. A wave of affection rolled off of her toward the blonde-haired wonder. Although his news hadn't effected her, it had to be tormenting him. Not only was he gay, he loved the one person in the world who was least likely to want him back. "Are you feeling better?" 

"Yeah," she affirmed. "It was a reaction to a powder I was gonna use on the Gryffindor robes."

Blaise and Daphne snorted simultaneously, sat across from them.

Draco didn't respond. She could tell he knew she was lying, but he didn't say anything.

"Is that why you two were down there? A prank?" Daphne asked, smearing jam onto a croissant.

"Jealous you weren't invited?"

"Babe, you poisoned yourself and spent the night in the hospital wing, while I got permission to go into Hogsmeade for an ' _appointment_ ' and got three guys to buy me drinks in one evening. Jealous isn't the word I'd use."

Someone a few seats away from them laughed, sharply. Artificially. The ginger boy. He raised his glass of pumpkin juice at them in a mock toast.

The rest of that Saturday was spent lazily, Pansy lying beside the fire in the common room and staring at the Transfiguration book she'd been given by McGonagall. It was meant to be a book for dummies, explanation of theory so simply laid out that even a Squib could turn shit to gold by following the directions. Pansy, of course, got too frustrated to read past the first paragraph of the first chapter. Maybe if she failed out of school _and_ was kicked out by Aunt Josephine the Ministry would feel so bad for her they'd unfreeze the Parkinson assets. Sunday was no more productive. Theodore and Blaise tried to talk her into going to a party in the evening that the Hufflepuffs were hosting, but she was worried about bumping into Her. Besides, Professor Slughorn had been riding Pansy's ass about doing her prefect's rounds, and she figured that doing the night shift on a Sunday would mean the least

amount of vigilance or reprimanding would be required on her part. So, at 9PM she slipped into her ballet flats, threw on her rattiest jeans, and left the dungeons to patrol the Entrance Hall and the corridors surrounding. She took the Transfiguration book with her, hoping that somehow the mundaneness of her job would force her to learn something. Really, Pansy was the perfect prefect. The only spells she was any good at were jinxes and hexes. What else would she ever need?

By ten, her route was so familiar to her she decided she'd be fine sitting on the floor in one of the smaller, darker corridors and patrolling the rest with her mind. It'd be fine, she _was_ a witch after all, she was sure it'd do the trick. Maybe she was secretly a divination prodigy and just needed a way to test out her powers. Pansy was rereading the first page of her book for the fourth time when she heard footsteps coming her way. She spoke without looking up. "Get back to bed or it's detention."

"What a disciplinarian."

Pansy closed her eyes. Of course. Of _course._ When she opened them, Hermione had sat against the wall across from her. She was smiling at Pansy. The Parkinson girl was thankful for the darkness, the only light coming from the illuminated tips of their wands - she felt her cheeks colour.

"I've got this round. You can take another route."

"You wouldn't be trying to get rid of me, would you, Pansy?" Hermione using Pansy's name sent a thrill through her. _Careful,_ she warned herself. "In fact, you wouldn't happen to be avoiding me in general?"

 _Only because I'm in love with you._ "Not at all."

"You know, the old Pansy would've taken that chance to say something mean."

"The old Pansy?"

Hermione shrugged. "You seem different."

"Yeah, well. I guess everyone's different."

The Gryffindor tilted her head, considering that statement. Pansy saw her eyes fall on the book in her hands. " _Transfiguration Translated?_ That's a third year book, isn't it? What are you doing with it?"

Pansy blushed even deeper. Something about the darkness made it easier for her to be honest. "I'm awful at it. At it all, actually."

"It?"

"Magic. Sometimes, it feels like I only got my Hogwarts letter because my parents twisted Dumbledore's arm. I'm not magic enough to really belong here. Ironic, isn't it? After all those years I bullied…" her voice trailed off. _You,_ she had been about to say. _For being Muggleborn. And you're so much better at magic than me. Exceptional._

Hermione had clearly not expected for Pansy to be so forthright, sitting silently for a moment. When she shifted to sit cross legged, coming a few inches closer toward her, Pansy's heart rate picked up. A lock of the other girl's bushy hair fell in her eyes, and Pansy had to fight the urge to lean forward and tuck it behind her ear. Pansy had always been the bold one, the daring one. She couldn't count the number of times she'd flirted with and made out with boys at various get togethers, rolling with the punches, ignoring the fact that she didn't enjoy it in the least and felt sick. Now, however, she felt like a clueless school girl in way over her head. The note from the other night gave her no confidence. In all likelihood, Hermione hadn't realised just how flirtatious she had come across. Was simply being a kind person doing the right thing.

"What an utterly preposterous thing to say. You belong here just as much as anyone else. If you want, I could -" she paused, biting her lip. Pansy _ached._ "I could help you."

"Like…" the Slytherin was sure she was speaking an octave higher than before. "Tutoring?"

"Maybe. If that's something that you might be interested in."

A million cheesy, romantic scenarios ran through her head at once. _Stop it. Repress. Say no._

"Sure," she said instead.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

"Sure."

Hermione felt a rush of giddiness flood through her, its cause surely not Pansy's quiet but definite assent to have Hermione tutor her. She looked into Pansy's eyes to see if she could make out the other's true feelings toward her, but it was like looking at the eyes of a painting. There was no getting past the surface. Instead, she inhaled, holding out a hand. "Give me yours," she ordered, bossing people around being one of her many strong qualities. Pansy didn't move. Rolling her eyes, Hermione leant forward and reached for the dark haired girl's fingers.

When they made contact, a breeze ruffled through the corridor, raising their hair around them in halos. _Strange._ Hermione cupped Pansy's hands with hers, and raised her wand, muttering an incantation. Unfolding from nothing, a purple petalled pansy swirled into existence, spinning to a stop in Pansy's hands. Hermione looked up to see the other's face. Pansy was staring down at the flower, mouth slightly agape, a wonder in her eyes that made Hermione feel satisfied. _I've impressed her._ When the Slytherin realised she was being examined, however, she snapped her hands away, crushing the flower in her fist.

"Oh," she said, voice small. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright." Hermione laughed awkwardly. "Plenty where that came from." 

A silence fell between them, but it felt easy, comfortable. Hermione took the chance to look at Pansy, really _see_ her. Even in the darkness she seemed to glow bright enough to make details out. Her hair wasn't completely black, there were strands here and there that were a snow white, and she wondered just how stressful her life had to have been for her to already have grey hair. It was sleek, straight, down to her waist, but she seemed to be annoyed at it. It was in a loose braid that rested over her shoulder. Her features, sharp and narrow, reminded her of a charcoal sketch. She was impossibly pale, nothing disturbing her skin bar a beauty mark or two, one placed delicately on her left brow bone. When Hermione was little, her mother had told her beauty marks were places where angels had kissed you in your sleep. Hermione had been startled by the fact, unconvinced yet perturbed.

"Can I ask you something?" she whispered, rubbing the space between her thumb and forefinger with her other hand. Pansy nodded, not looking up, staring at the floor. "Why were you so cruel to me?"

Something flashed across Pansy's face, but Hermione wasn't sure what it was. Her heart was in her throat as she waited for the response. _Why do you care so much? You should be heartless. You should walk away. You should leave her to her sorry magic and forget and move on. You're bigger than her._ But Hermione didn't believe what she told herself. Couldn't, even if she wanted to.

"It was easier to be a coward. To go along with what everyone did. To go along with what my parents taught me." Pansy's voice was shaking. "It was easier to… lie to myself. To blame you for everything that was wrong with me. It was easier. And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

She seemed to hover for a moment, debating whether to run or stay, but Hermione reached out and grabbed her wrist before she could dart off like she'd already done twice before. Pansy gasped at the touch, slumping back to the floor. Hermione removed her grip, shocked at the desperation she'd felt in that instant, the deep want she'd felt to keep Pansy close. "It's okay," she said breathlessly. Then, "I forgive you."

For a moment, Hermione looked at Pansy and saw straight through her, a shimmer of vulnerability blinding her momentarily. With a blink, the moment was gone. Pansy was impassive once more.

"Why do you know about orthodontists?"

"It's too lame to tell you." 

"Pansy Parkinson? Lame? That'll be the day."

Pansy smiled. _I made her smile!_ Sighing, the girl stretched her legs and arms, then dropped _Transfiguration Translated_ to the side. A new easiness floated about her. "I figured out a long time ago that if magic is too confusing for me to get, maybe Muggle things aren't. I've spent years researching the Muggle world. History, science, literature. Have you -" she hesitated. "Have you read _Romeo and Juliet_?"

Hermione had to fight a knowing grin. "Yes."

"Well, it's bullshit, the whole thing." not what Hermione had been expecting to hear.

"You don't think it's romantic?"

"Romantic?" Pansy scoffed. "To make a bunch of stupid mistakes for a boy you just met then _kill_ yourself over him after he's stupid enough to do the same? The language is romantic, a lot of it. Shakespeare is a good poet. But there's no inherent romance in their situation. If anything, the story romanticises death and hopelessness. Isn't there enough of that in the real world?"

Hermione frowned. She'd never thought of it like that. _I'm discussing Shakespeare with Pansy Parkinson at 11PM and learning something. Had I been told this a year ago..._ "If you don't find star crossed lovers romantic, what do you find romantic?"

Pansy bit her fingernail, something dancing in her eyes. She didn't respond. Instead, she looked quizzically at Hermione, glance like an x-ray. It made Hermione feel self-concious. _What is she seeing?_ "I preferred your old teeth."

"My old - what?"

"Your old teeth," she repeated, sounding shy once more. "In fourth year, remember, you were hit by that jinx, and you had them shrunk to smaller than what they'd been before? I liked them… before. You're lovely - I mean, they're lovely - it's good, now. Just I…" Pansy had turned a brilliant shade of scarlet, and stuttered into silence. Hermione's heart soared. She picked up the abandoned book and absently leafed through it to appease her restless hands.

"You used to make fun of them." she replied, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. _You're lovely,_ she had said. _You're lovely you're lovely you're lovely._

Pansy shrugged. "I guess I made fun of you for things I liked or was jealous of."

"Is that why you made fun of me and Harry in Fourth Year? Talking to Rita Skeeter as if we were a couple? You were jealous of - who, me? Did you like Harry?"

The questions were spilling from her, now, years of burning anger now turned to burning curiosity waiting for resolution. Pansy looked speechless. "Erm," she eventually said, scratching her forehead. "Yeah. No. That was just a way to mess with you."

Hermione shook her head in amazement. She'd never had the natural predisposition for cruelty. "A stroke of genius."

"I think I just wanted your attention -"

The statement appeared to stun them both. Pansy stopped mid sentence, looking horrified by herself, and Hermione leant back, unsure what to make of what had just been said. Had it been anyone else, the conversation they'd shared so far would've made Hermione think _she likes me._ But it was Pansy bloody Parkison. She was straighter than an arrow, had dated Draco Malfoy, doted on him before her very eyes. So she was confused, mostly, dejected. _Dejected? Why in Merlin' name?_

"Our round finished ten minutes ago." Pansy stood abruptly, Hermione hurrying to follow suit. "We'd better go."

"Yes," she said, holding out the book. "Of course."

Pansy took it and began to walk away. Just as Hermione was about to turn in the other direction, Pansy spun back around. "Every year the Slytherin prefects host a secret party in the prefects' bathroom. It's next weekend. Would you like to come?"

Hermione blinked. _That is 100% against the rules._ The thought exhilarated her. "I'd love to."

A smile, and then Pansy was gone, disappeared into the darkness.

Hermione spent the week feeling like a scattered cloud; divided fifteen ways, waiting for an oncoming storm. Ron finally caught her after Charms, demanding to know what had happened between them. Hermione had told him the truth, her head dipped to avoid his look, and had left him speechless as she walked away. Harry caught her that evening in the common room. _Do you… er, want to talk about it?_ she'd responded, _There's nothing to talk about_ \- also the truth - and buried herself in homework. She didn't see Pansy on any of her prefects' rounds again, but spent every free moment in anticipation of the party she'd been invited to. She even got permission to go into Hogsmeade to buy a dress. The only clothing store in town sold robes almost exclusively, but when Hermione asked the witch behind the counter if she had anything less formal, the woman had winked and asked _A boy, eh, lass? I'll fix you up,_ before showing her to a small rail of Muggle dresses in the back. She didn't know why she was so excited. Parties were far from places where she thrived. She'd shaken off the insult of not having been invited to the secret shindig before - after all, she had a reputation as a killjoy and a stickler for rules.

It seemed as though it wasn't a prefect-exclusive thing, simply a thing that had up until that year excluded the Gryffindors, as the hosts were always Slytherins. In the new post-war spirit of chivalry, now a good number of Gryffindors were coming, prefect or otherwise. Ron, in a heartbreak slump, had to be talked into it by Harry. _Come on, mate. You can't avoid her forever._ Hermione had overheard the conversation while stood on the stairs to the dorms. _Brilliant. Sounds like it'll be a night to remember._

When the night fainlly came, Hermione stood in front of her mirror for an extended period of time, messing with her hair while Lavender sat beside her, in her pyjamas. The two of them had been the only Eighth Year Gryffindor girls to come back, and so they had an entire room of beds all to themselves, their possessions littering every surface. Ever since the attack, Lavender had been an entirely different person. Quiet, gaunt, reclusive. It broke Hermione's heart, but for all her trying she couldn't convince Lavender to go to the party. "With this scar?" she'd whispered, shaking her head. And that was that. Hermione knew how it felt to have a scar you didn't want anyone to see. _Mudblood_ was still seared across her forearm from where Bellatrix Lestrange had carved it while torturing her. Hermione saw her reflection blanche as the memory came to her. Shaking it away, she twisted her hair up to see what it looked like. _At least yours isn't across your face. Lavender will never forget what happened to her. People staring won't let her, her own image in the mirror won't._

"Leave it down," Lavender said. Hermione complied.

To keep the gathering from being busted by a teacher, a complex staggered timing system of arrivals was put into place, along with a password required at the door. She left the common room ten minutes after Harry, Ron and Seamus. Hermione had to admire the intelligence with which the Slytherins broke rules in order to get what they wanted. Arriving at the door to the prefect's bathroom at 9:15PM, Hermione smoothed out the purple fabric of her uncomfortably form-fitting purple dress and knocked. "Password?" came a whisper right in her ear, making her jump. Clearly a spell. "Inferno," she whispered back.

The door opened a crack, and Hermione slipped inside, greeted by the bemused and clearly intoxicated face of Blaise Zabini. He gave her a once over that made her squirm. "Welcome to the fun, Granger. Grab a cup of something, roll your stockings down."

He wandered away. Hermione looked around the room. The tall ceiling had been bewitched so that a red fog swirled a foot above everyone's heads, casting a pink glow over everything. The bathroom was packed with not only eighth years, but seventh and sixth, unfamiliar faces bustling about and calling out to each other. The pool-sized baths had been filled with steaming, bubbly, black water, and several people were diving in or sitting around the edges, chatting. Everyone looked drunk. _I do not belong._ She walked over to a table laden with bottles and cups, no food in sight, nothing non-alcoholic either. _You're here, might as well part-take._ With a confused look at the first thing she grabbed, a label-less blue bottle, she filled a cup to the brim and sniffed it - cherries - before taking a giant sip. She thought she'd gag from the strength, but it was sweet and went down with ease. Immediately, she was sure she felt it in her veins. Suddenly the music and sound felt like a blanket instead of a hammer.

"'Mione!" came a voice at her elbow, and she turned to see Draco Malfoy going in for a hug. Shocked, she hugged him back. He pulled away and placed a hand on her cheek. "We're good, you and I, Granger, aren't we? Old days behind us?"

"Sure," Hermione laughed, watching Malfoy pull someone masked from the crowd.

"Well, then take my word for it, yeah? Penny Pannie is a great gal. You'd be lucky to have her for a friend."

The someone was pushed toward her, and Draco faded away. "Sorry," Hermione breathed as she stumbled, supporting the weight of the girl who'd come her way. She was wearing what she believed magazines referred to as _a little black dress,_ and her hair was up, out of the way. The mask, a crow's beak, slipped off. Hermione realised it was Pansy before Pansy realised it was Hermione.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

Warm arms caught Pansy as she was pushed by Draco in someone's direction. She wasn't just drunk, she was _drunk,_ the kind of drunk she'd promised herself she wouldn't become. Pansy didn't know if she was an alcoholic to the very essence of the word, but she knew that she was a dangerous drinker. _Just have one glass_ never applied to her; it was physically impossible for her not to refill it twice, thrice, until she was throwing up on the bathroom floor and waking up the next morning with no memory of the night before. _Binge drinker._ That was the appropriate term. It was simple, the reason she drank so excessively - it was the very same reason most of the world drank so excessively. Numbness. The sharp ability of alcohol to numb and dull every bad feeling, to extend and make big every good one, to add fairy lights to every encounter and stop the voice in her head that sounded distinctly like her mother's. So that night she'd fallen into the familiar trap, something she hadn't done for months, and downed drink after drink until everything spun as it should. Her outfit, a sort of sexy faux attempt at being a raven, had been born of the desire to blend into the crowd. The mask allowed her to laugh and listen to conversations and jokes without being prodded and questioned for her great betrayal or her family's involvement in the war. In the new world they were all living in, everyone, especially at that party, was bold in their politics, bold in their shaming of anyone who'd been on the wrong side of history. _Good,_ Pansy thought, but it also meant she fell victim to their resentment. Something she was all too aware she deserved.

So, all of the above meant that it took her a few moments to realise what was happening when those warm, firm arms caught her and set her right, her mask falling to the ground. It was actually Hermione's smell she recognised first. Pansy had always wondered where the girl's vanilla scent came from, but she'd known it was Hermione's scent ever since they were clashing twelve-year-olds. It'd made her mother's vanilla cookies especially overwhelming to eat at Christmas. When Pansy's eyes focused, and she really took in the sight before her, she was taken aback. Hermione was Hermione, but times ten, her messy curls shining and a purple dress hugging her everywhere. She was wearing a bright red lipstick, and Pansy couldn't take her eyes off the other girl's velvet, inviting lips. _Kiss me,_ they were saying. _Kiss me and make me yours._

"Sorry," Hermione said, breaking Pansy's trance. She looked up to see that the purple angel was flushed, or else - blushing? A drink that smelt like a cherry amaretto sour in hand. "You look - you look - how you look."

Pansy's wine addled brain could think of nothing else to do besides smile. Without giving it too much intense thought, she swiped a bottle from the drinks table, took Hermione by the wrist, and pulled her toward the less crowded side of the room. Bursts of conversation were loud in her ear as she pushed through people. " _I told him, if you want to make it with me you'd better start fucking paying attention." "This is stronger than I'd meant it to be." "The way things are going at the moment, it's like being pureblood is somehow taboo - I don't know about you, but that isn't the wizarding world I want to live in. Certainly not what our forefathers intended, either." "Is that your real hair?"_

One of the things she'd overheard made her frown, but she was like a faulty computer; she couldn't identify what had caused the reaction, and by the time she reached the pool on the far end of the room with only a few people sitting around it, the memory of hearing something had vanished, replaced entirely by the blaring thought _she's so beautiful if I got into this water I'd drown while looking at her._ Sitting at a corner, Pansy slid off her heels and dangled her feet in the warm water. Hermione did the same, with less confidence, taking a large sip from her cup. Pansy smiled at her again, and Hermione blushed, again. _Why is she blushing? Must be the drinking. She won't be used to it._

"Are you having fun?" Hermione asked, looking at the swirling black water.

"I am now," Pansy replied, pulling out the loose cork of the bottle with her teeth. "How've you been? I haven't seen you around. Except, y'know, in lessons, but you're always too busy being clever to notice me."

"I notice you."

A thrill of pleasure rushed through her. She waited. Hermione cleared her throat, and opened her mouth, as if uncertain what she should say. Another gulp of the amaretto. "Well," she finally sighed. "I've been pretty overwhelmed with things. How about you?" 

"I've been pretty overwhelmed thinking about you."

Pansy hadn't meant to flirt - it was second nature to her, especially when drunk, and had slipped out of her before she could think it through. She liked it, though. She liked flirting, liked messing with Hermione even in her new Pansy state. It was a wholesome messing with, this time. It just seemed an amusing thought, straight edge and straight as Hermione being flustered by Pansy's words. And she did look flustered, her eyes alarmed as she took the bottle from Pansy's hands and took a swig from it. "Oh!" she exclaimed, choking, putting a hand to her mouth.

Pansy laughed. "Firewhiskey, babe. Not a downer, a sipper."

Hermione nodded, cracking up as well. Something about her tipsy expression seemed easy and warm, and it filled Pansy's heart with affection. _I love you,_ she wanted to say. _I love your clever words and your flower spells and your big hair and your laugh._ She couldn't, of course. Would never. And it ached. Even if she'd wanted to say something, the moment was broken as someone plopped down beside Pansy, putting an arm around her shoulder.

"Well hello, lovers." Daphne's slurred speech, glitter falling from her eyelashes as she blinked. Hermione seemed immediately on edge.

"Do you mind, Daph?" Pansy said, smiling tightly. Daphne raised an eyebrow, but stayed put.

"There's a ginger bloke over there," she said instead, pointing to the crowded side of the room. "Saying a lot of shit. Saying a lot of stuff that some people are listening to. _Spiritedly,_ I'd say. I told him where to SHOVE it," she said, shoving Pansy forward on the word but catching her before she fell into the water. "Then came over here. Not your ginger bloke, Granger, so no worries. He's been saying some different stuff though." Pansy recognised the look in her friend's eye, the one that meant trouble was about to happen, but she couldn't think quick enough to stop her from saying her next words.

"Heard you've gone gay, is that so?"

 _Whoosh._ Pansy was underwater, eyes stinging from the soap, blackness everywhere, a deathly silence overcoming her. She kicked her legs and reached an arm up, waiting to hit the surface of the water, but her fingers felt marble instead. The bottom of the pool. Disorientated, heavy from drink, she tried to right herself, but it was like vines were crawling up her limbs and holding her in place. Her lungs began to hurt as she held her breath, and panic set in. Just as she was about to scream, letting go of what little air she had, hands were pulling her up and her head broke the surface of the water. Laughter hit her ears as she swam desperately to the edge and held on, gasping for breath. Blaise was standing above her besides Daphne, and they were both cackling.

"Fuck!" Pansy shouted, her fear turning to anger. "Are you fucking mental? You fucking cunt. I could've - fuck!"

"Lighten up, tightarse." Blaise scoffed, pulling Daphne with him as they walked away to join a group at the far end of the pool. Pansy felt totally sober, totally spent. She turned to thank her saviour, and saw none other than the current apple of her eyes floating gracefully in the middle of the pool. Hermione was watching Pansy through narrowed eyes, expression unreadable. Wordlessly, Pansy swam back over to her. Daphne's words before she'd been pushed in came to her like a delayed message. Hermione, gay? Hermione Granger? It had to have been a rumour. Pansy had started one just like it back when she was younger and less enlightened. Nonetheless, the thought made Pansy feel drunk all over again, her blood thrumming with the thought of it. _You can relax. If she was, she'd never want you in a million years, bitch._ The thrumming stopped. Pansy reached Hermione, acutely aware of how close they were, of how she must look with mascara running and her hair sticking to her head and cheeks. Somehow, she didn't care. It helped that Hermione looked like a water nymph, like having wet hair and skin and floating in place effortlessly were part of her every day life. At this distance, Pansy could make out the droplets on Hermione's eyelashes, the freckles scattered across the arch of her nose. If she reached out even a little, Pansy would touch Hermione's arm. Everything else that was unseen, below the water, thrilled her. Turned her on, she realised, her face flushing.

"Thanks," she breathed.

"No problem."

"Don't mind Daphne. She's a right bastard when she drinks."

Hermione smiled. "It's alright. She was right, though, you know."

One beat, two. "Oh."

The red-lipped girl looked as though she wanted to say something else, but a voice interrupted her. _When will the interruptions end?_

"Oi!"

They both turned their heads to see Harry Potter calling out from the group Daphne and Blaise had joined. He was shirtless, wearing nothing besides his boxers, which were sopping wet. _Draco must be fucking dying._ Pansy spotted his blonde head sitting in their circle. "We're playing truth or dare! C'mon, 'Mione! Pansy, you too!"

 _Badideabadideabadidea._ The words swarmed her brain as they swam over to the other end and climbed out of the water, joining the circle, not sitting next to each other. She took an abandoned cup off the floor and downed it in one go, desperate to get her rush back. The group was a who's who of bedraggled Eighth Years, and sitting there was her worst nightmare. Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, sat shoulder to shoulder with Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, Theo Nott, Daphne Greengrass, Padma Patil and Hannah Abbott randomly thrown into the mix. A year ago this gathering wouldn't have happened in anyone's wildest nightmare. _Whatever happened to good old fashioned rivalry and resentment?_ Only Ron and Seamus seemed displeased with where they were, muttering in low voices to each other. _Fine, then. Leave, you self-satisfied gits. Hermione doesn't even want you here._

"We're playing Slytherin style," Blaise grinned a wicked grin, charming over a large glass and pouring into it various liquids from various bottles. A nightmarish cocktail. He finally pulled a small vial from his pocket, holding it up with a twinkle in his eye. Pansy didn't want to play Slytherin style truth or dare. "A dash of veritaserum from the best house's private stash."

"Of course you lot have a private stash of that," Padma scoffed. Blaise flashed the wicked grin her way before pouring the contents of the vial into the glass.

"Hang on," Dean said, looking as though he'd smoked something rather delightful recently. "We're not - drinking it?"

"Of course we are. Unless you're a coward, Thomas?" Daphne smirked. _God, my friends are assholes._

Dean's face hardened. The glass made its way around the circle, everyone taking a gulp, and when it finally reached Pansy she looked down into the red concoction and debated leaving the game and the disaster that was about to ensue. But Hermione was staying; had taken a gulp with such confidence, that Pansy wanted to stay, to see what happened. And staying meant playing along. She jerked her head in exasperation, then finished off the drink. It hit her hard, her insides alighting.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

 _I like drinking._ The thought struck Hermione when she downed half the cocktail Blaise had made, her throat burning as it went down. She was drunk, now, that was certain, and she'd never been drunk before. But she got it. Like that pop of understanding, the top of a champagne bottle flying off - _pop! I get it! I get the films and the songs and the books!_ And the freedom of it filled her up like she herself was a cup, and someone was sipping her, and she was making that someone deliriously fizzy with it all. Pansy was drinking from her. Hermione could tell. Pansy _liked_ her. She wanted Hermione. When they'd been under the water, inches between them, a spark had struck that set the surface of the pool around them on fire. They'd remained unburnt, each other's lifeline, but Hermione had felt _hot;_ heat travelled up her neck and coloured her cheeks and made her winded, and watching Pansy's ice blue eyes through the strands of her wet, dark hair sticking to her face, she'd finally seen in those eyes what she hadn't seen before. Desire. Maybe even a liking. Maybe even - Hermione hiccuped. It made her giggle, which made Harry beside her laugh, too. Ron was on the other side of the circle, dangerously near Pansy, staring, and Draco was sitting on Harry's other side instead. Hermione thought she felt something between them. Shy glances. Draco staring at Harry's chest. Harry staring at Draco's eyeliner-lined eyes. _Eyeliner? Draco Malfoy? The world has ended after all. The world as we know it._ And now that she'd been outed, she felt an oxymoronic feeling of being free and being trapped. Trapped in what the label might mean, free and being able to do and live as she pleased. _Fine, then. They want to force my secrets out of me, I'll force my secrets onto them, I'll suffocate them._ She felt purposeful. She was her old self again, recharged, reborn. _Thank you, vodka, thank you for everything you've done for me._

"Prefects are hosting so they can go first. Draco, Pans?" Blaise nodded at them, and Pans lifted her shoulders carelessly, passing on the responsibility to Draco. The Malfoy heir looked both sullen and lively, sort of like a junkie fresh on a new fix, and he stretched his arms, bones cracking.

"Theo?"

The house-mate grinned. "Dare." 

"Now," Blaise interrupted, the moonlight streaming in through a stained glass window dancing on his bronze skin. He was sitting resting on one arm, one knee propped up, and Padma was very obviously admiring the sight. "Remember, if you pick dare, you have to do the dare or else you _have_ to answer whatever truth you get asked. If you pick truth, don't like the question, you can escape through a dare, but then you _have_ to complete that dare."

"Or else what?" Seamus asked, his bare shoulders coiled with tension. Ron was just as uneasy beside him.

Blaise smiled lazily, and didn't respond. Attention swerved back to Draco, who was absent-mindedly stirring a straw in his drink. Harry was watching him closely, and it made Hermione feel pleased for some strange reason. "I dare you to take your trousers off."

"Lazy!" Pansy trilled, resting her head in Blaise's lap. Something flared in Hermione's chest as she watched. Draco shrugged, and Theo did the same, shimmying out of his 70s bell-bottom jeans and revealing his Sweetwater All-Stars Quidditch briefs. Dean perked up. "You like the All-Stars? I didn't think anyone this side of the pond would be so daft." Theo laughed, throwing a plastic cup his way. _Look at us,_ Hermione thought, her drunk heart brimming with love. _Getting along. McGonagall would love this as soon as she was done shitting herself at the sight of the mess and teenage binge drinking._

"Weasley?"

Ron sniffed, arms resting over his knees. "I'm not playing."

"You have to. You drank from the cup." Blaise raised an eyebrow, annoyed. Hermione seconded the feeling, and couldn't restrain herself.

"Yeah," she added, the word coming out in a higher pitch that she expected it to. "You can't just sit there and spy on the game without playing. Play or leave."

Daphne and Theo both went _ooooh_ at the same time, but Hermione didn't care, pointedly staring Ron down. He turned crimson, and set his cup down. "Fine. Truth."

"Tell us, is Granger secretly a wildcat in bed?"

Hermione's breath caught, and she flashed a look at Pansy, who was staring at the floor.

Ron looked as if something had been answered for him. He slumped, his anger ebbing away before their very eyes. "I wouldn't know."

"You never…?" Padma, of all people.

"No."

Everyone's heads turned to look at Hermione, who was halfway through downing a glass of something. She choked when she noticed the attention, liquid dribbling down her chin. She wiped it away silently.

"Harry, truth or dare?" Ron said, reaching for a packet of crisps lying on the floor. _Right, now you're at ease, now you're fine, now that you've embarrassed me in front of everyone._

Harry was still half-naked and slick with water, but like a true Gryffindor, he wasn't afraid of what he might be asked to do. "Dare," he smiled. Ron pursed his lips in thought, then matched the smile wolfishly. "I dare you to sit on Malfoy's lap."

Blaise wolf-whistled, and Hermione looked at the two boys, both looking very red _indeed_ as they exchanged a look. Pansy ducked her head, as if willing a curtain of hair to hide a choked laugh. _What's that about?_ Harry raised his eyebrows at Draco, asking _you game?_ , to which Draco just sat there, frozen, blonde hair falling in his face, glitter sparkling on his cheeks. Harry raised himself and dropped his weight in Draco's lap, even putting his arms around Draco's neck and blowing a kiss Ron's away, giving them all a show. Daphne gave an appreciative howl, and Hannah Abbott was beside herself with excitement. _We're a bunch of savages._ Hermione couldn't see Draco's face, as it was blocked by Harry's frame, but she wondered how he was taking it. _If they'd been told literally a year ago they'd be in this position now, they'd have stumbled over themselves to jinx the messenger._

"Zabini," Harry said, arms still around his blonde catch.

Nothing would perturb Blaise in a million years. He sat up straight, coiled with readiness. "As they say, 'Dare, always dare.'"

"I dare you to snog Pansy."

Hermione's head whipped up. She didn't want that. She didn't want Blaise to snog Pansy. She didn't want Pansy to snog Blaise. She wanted - well, she wanted not that. It didn't matter why, it just mattered that Pansy and Blaise not snog in a million years. It mattered that Pansy didn't _want_ to, that it should never happen, that Hermione would not be made to watch it. She drank straight from a bottle this time, anxiety pooling in her stomach. _Dontsnogdontsnogdontsnog. Picktruthpicktruthpicktruth._

"Been there done that." Blaise snorted, and he pulled Pansy toward him, their lips meeting in a moment that should've been much more _disaster-y, explosion-y_ than it was in reality. _Jealousy._ Jealousy simmered and came to a boil within Hermione's gut as she watched them lock together, kissing for far too long, Blaise's hand on Pansy's thigh. _Don't touch her!_ she wanted to shout, but she was too drunk to be frightening, every hex and jinx and poison jumbled up in her head as her face flushed watching them make out. _Is she liking it? Doesn't she care? Doesn't she care I'm watching? Doesn't she - fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!_

Blaise seemed to watch her out the corner of his eye, and that put her on edge more than anything else. _Get your fucking hands off of her._ They stopped, finally, Pansy leaning back with a blank expression, wiping her mouth. Blaise leaned back on his elbows, looking self-satisfied to say the least. "Granger. Truth or dare?"

"Truth!" she snapped, causing people to shoot her confused looks. Hermione drank to fight down the embarrassment. _Of course Pansy never liked you. A girl like that could never like you. You're unlikeable. You talk too much. Know-it-all, judgemental Hermione Jean Granger._

The Slytherin boy's lip curled. _"_ Are you jealous that I got to snog Pans and you didn't?"

Hermione couldn't stop even if she wanted to. She wasn't Harry. She couldn't fight it. "Yes." 

In slow motion, like a fucking film, whistles and howls erupted around her as Padma gave her a playful shove and Ron looked like a ball of rage again, standing up and leaving the circle, Seamus darting up after him. Hermione, however, had eyes only for Pansy, who was looking right back at her with a look that said - what? She couldn't tell, but something, a look so charged that Hermione felt like an electric thing. A dark look. A look that made Hermione bothered, and hot, thanks. The trance broke when Pansy looked away, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. Harry whispered to her, _are you okay?,_ sliding off Draco's lap. Hermione nodded, a lump in her throat.

The game went on stickily and with more speed, several of the group losing articles of clothing and vapid kisses and touches and truths being demanded. The turn rolled around to Hannah Abbott, and everyone took the moment to adjust themselves, whisper something to someone, refill their drinks. Nothing Hannah could come up with would thrill any of the Slytherin or Gryffindor daredevils in the circle.

"Draco," she said, her sweet voice barely audible over the crowd's intensified rowdiness and the music. _I hope the cloaking spells they put up around the area are worth their salt._ "Who in this circle have you fantasised about sexually?" 

"Ooh, do tell, Drakey, seeing as how the rest of us do _nothing_ besides fantasise about you," Daphne purred, lying down flat on her back and putting her legs across - randomly - Hermione's lap.

Draco's face looked tight, and he closed and opened his mouth several times, a vein in his forehead pulsing. _He's trying to fight the veritaserum,_ Hermione realised. "I -" his voice was strained. "Potter _._ "

No one said anything. In their bubble, you could hear a pin drop as everyone exchanged looks. Hermione searched Harry's face, but besides having his mouth agape there was no certain reaction to be read in his features. Draco looked like a strawberry. He looked angry. He looked like he wanted to take his anger out on someone. "Pansy," he said, breaking the silence.

"Dare."

"I dare you to go into that cupboard for seven minutes in heaven with Granger."

Hermione stared at Draco, who looked partly regretful of what he had said and partly determined, like it was somehow Pansy or Hermione's fault that what had just happened to him happened, and they both deserved to be punished, embarrassed for it. Pansy stood up. _Why isn't she switching to truth? She'd clearly rather be in there with Blaise,_ Hermione thought, staying put, watching Pansy walk inside the cupboard over in the corner closest to their group. Daphne gave her a kick in the side, her eyes gleaming. Beneath them, the scars that she'd been asked about that night were hidden under a caked application of the same glitter Draco was covered in. She'd said dare to avoid answering the question, making a mystery of her Hermione was curious to solve. In her tipsy state, however, it was easy to forget about that as she was pushed to her feet and in a daze walked over to the cupboard, shutting herself inside. It was dark, and Hermione had left her wand back in the circle. Pansy hadn't lit hers if she had it, and Hermione couldn't see her, only hear a light breathing. She wanted to step forward, but the space was small, she could feel that, and she was afraid of falling right into her.

"We can just wait the seven minutes out," Hermione slurred coldly, finding it difficult to hide the hurt in her voice. Not that she'd ever been amazing at hiding how she felt. _She never liked you. Her flirting was just to mess with you. She's come up with a new and creative way to bully you, after all these years._ Warm hands closed around her wrists, and Hermione was pulled forward against Pansy, her body flush against her. Her heart stopped, heat building in her legs, her stomach. The Parkinson girl kept her hold on her, and when she spoke, her voice was right in Hermione's ear, running a shiver down her skull. "Did I really make you jealous?"

Hermioned swallowed, every part of her skin that was touching Pansy's burning. "Yes."

"Oh," Pansy breathed, exhaling on Hermione's neck. _She'll fucking kill me._

Wanting Pansy felt like wanting a bottle to drop and smash so that the bottle top might finally know release. She made Hermione feel there was some point to the new world they were living in, like there was method to the madness, like she was full of potential and like she could see herself going somewhere. Pansy was the opposite of poison, not even a drug or like one of the many drinks Hermione had had that evening, she was a natural feeling. Organic. _This is what it feels like,_ she thought, putting a shaking hand on Pansy's waist. _This is what it's meant to feel like._

"All those years I was hurting you, really, I was in love with you," Pansy said, urgency raising her voice above a whisper. Blinking, getting used to the dark, Hermione made out Pansy's features right in front of her, and her eyes were looking all around desperately, like she was in pain. Hermione didn't like that. With confidence she didn't know she had, she pulled Pansy even closer to her and kissed her, wrapping both arms around her neck and not intending on letting go, ever. She tasted tooth-achingly sweet, whatever she'd been drinking clearly a liqueur, and her lips were soft, movements graceful as her hand dug into Hermione's wild curls. Their kiss deepened. Hands started slipping, Hermione's dress hitching upwards, and a breathless moan escaped her lips -

"Come on out!" the door swung open, and like magnets repulsing, the two girls jumped apart, Hermione's foot landing in a metal bucket.

Without looking at anyone or anything, Hermione walked out, retrieved her wand, and left the prefect's bathroom. The corridor was dead silent and invitingly cool. When she reached the common room without being caught, and climbed into her bed upstairs without changing, hiding her head under her pillow, she sat still and listened to the peaceful sound of Lavender's breathing. Something inside her had cracked and began to spill, and she, daughter of dentists and brightest witch of her age, curled up into herself tighter so as to keep herself together.


End file.
